Video journalist

This year's Perth International Arts Festival program explodes across all art forms with a West Australian spirit that makes Perth the essential place to be this summer.

PIAF is Australia's original arts festival and in 2013 delivers a superb program celebrating works of imagination and integrity, created by artists who are daring, thoughtful and original.

More than 500 artists from Australia and around the world join hundreds more from WA including The Berliner Ensemble (directed by Robert Wilson), Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet, Margaret Atwood, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Maceo Parker, Jim Campbell, Frédéric Flamand and Ai Weiwei.

Clouds presented by Arcadalanza (Spain).

The festival will open on February 8 with a dusk welcome enitled Beginnings on the banks of the Swan River, with performances by Archie Roach and a glorious Noongar choir.

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Then the 2013 Festival explodes out of the blocks, literally; the Lotterywest Festival Spectacular Bombs Per Minute from Les Commandos Percu (France) with a hypnotic fireworks spectacular fresh from opening the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad - incorporating the high-octane arts of explosives and percussion.

The Festival's huge free program, which runs until March 7, will spill onto the streets of Perth transforming the CBD into a theatre, an art gallery, and a peep-show for Celebration: La Marea - an Australian exclusive that sees ten scenes play out in the illuminated windows, balconies and cafes of Rokeby Road.

Plus Of All The People In All The World by theatre collective Stan's Café (UK) imagines the 1.54 billion people in Perth's time zone (GMT+8) as grains of rice, creating a hauntingly beautiful, constantly shifting sculptural landscape that brings statistics to life in eloquent visual form.

For fine music lovers, one of the world's great companies Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble (Germany) comes to Australia for the very first time with their masterwork The Threepenny Opera, with visionary director Robert Wilson creating an unforgettable production of an extraordinary work.

Theatre highlights include a peculiarly entertaining musical about economics Mission Drift by New York darlings The TEAM (USA), the Australian exclusive La Cucina dell'Arte from sixth-generation circus performers Circus Ronaldo (Belgium) housed inside a nostalgically romantic vintage big-top tent, and The National Theatre of Scotland with their pubcrawling, manically funny theatrical hit The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart.

Program additions for the young at heart are plentiful with the vibrant and playful Clouds by Aracaladanza (Spain) headlining, as a mesmerising journey into the surreal world of René Magritte where clouds transform into sheep, dancers perform captivating routines and giant green apples fall from magical trees.

Perth hipsters will rock throughout the Festival to an eclectic selection of sounds from some of the most distinctive performers from around the globe including Cat Power, Chrysta Bell, Maceo Parker and David Lynch.

And the visual arts program highlights artists using technology to create deeply engaging work including Jim Campbell's Scattered Light; a remarkable canopy of suspended light bulbs that morphs into a 3D screen as the sun goes down, projecting the bustling energy of city life.

Overwhelmed with all the options? We certainly are, but a full program with running times soon to be released is likely to bring order to your summer schedule; watch this space or head to perthfestival.com.au for more.